words by J.A.G. Mabbutt
Every Christmas for the past four years, I have guided a Year 10 GCSE class through Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and like clockwork, as each stave is explored and the moral message of each ghostly visitor unpicked, the class and I find ourselves pursued by Dickens’ didacticism and reflective prowess. A tale of both vast socio-political speculation and spiritual self-assessment, Dickens’ novella hasn’t simply transformed the landscape of festive traditions; it has undoubtedly elevated it beyond a simple holiday of merriment. However, whilst every moment of the novella is tattooed onto my mind, for better or worse, one moment this year has captured my attention like no other, and in doing so, reformed my judgement of its significance. Assisted by the Virgil-like guide of the Ghost of Christmas Past, the protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge, is plunged into his past and initially presented the chance to reassess his lonesome childhood at a boarding school. Now, despite the offering of almost Proustian levels of sensory nostalgia and the vivid, almost dreamlike cast of fictional characters that are brought to life by Scrooge’s imagination, the moment that acts as a catalyst for his character development is seeing himself, a lonely child, left alone at Christmas. In utilising the sensory experiences of Scrooge as he unpicks his past, Dickens elevates the power of the past as more than just a period that came before the present, but instead an engrained, almost spectral reality that still haunts the present and future. This brief moment, which often gets lost in the avalanche of integral scenes taken from the novella, is, in my eyes, vitally important. Not simply because it helps the reader establish some foundational sympathy for the misanthropic Scrooge, but more so because it explains the influence of one’s past on one’s present and future, and the causality of trauma that lends itself to one’s being.
Alexander Payne’s 2024 film The Holdovers achieves something similar in its unflinching exploration into the heart of unresolved pasts and the way they shape our difficult presents. Arguably a modern Christmas masterpiece, Payne’s film is a sincere, deep dive into the human psyche of those whose troubled histories undermine the hopes of their futures. Ironically, the film’s study of the past and its influence is primarily introduced through its main character, History and Classics professor Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti). A tyrannical and curmudgeonly presence in the classroom, Hunham is a miserable, almost Scrooge-like figure who, akin to Dickens’ own character, is celebratory of his own isolation from both students and fellow faculty members alike. Over the Christmas period, Hunham is happy to wallow in his own company until he is made the responsible staff member for that year’s holdovers, students who don’t have the luxury of spending their Christmas with family or friends. Against his isolationist wishes, Hunham is forced to spend the break with a small collective of boys who are spoiled, bitter, infantile, and resistant to their incarceration with Hunham at their snowy, desolate boarding school. Amongst the boys, the character of Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa) stands out and, throughout the film’s narrative, comes to blows and an understanding with Hunham. Through exposure to one another and the assistance of cafeteria manager Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who is grieving her son’s death, both Tully and Hunham evolve and redeem themselves. Tully’s defiant, cynical, clever, yet wounded innocence acts as an ideal foil to the hidebound Hunham, as both men use the past, and its problematic ties to the present, to detour their destructive trajectories before it’s too late.
For Scrooge, the observation of his younger self alone and decoupled from any familial gathering at Christmas is enough to bring him to tears and spark regret over his earlier treatment of a carol-singing youth. As the Ghost reminds him, he was also once “a solitary child, neglected by his friends.”¹ Like Angus, young Scrooge is forced to exist in ignorance and abandonment. Both are cast adrift and forced to live surrounded by people who aren’t family. Unlike young Scrooge, however, Angus’ salvation doesn’t arrive in the form of a family member who invites Angus to return to a kinder and much more welcoming version of his home. Whereas Scrooge is rescued from his neglect by his sister Fan, Angus’ mother and step-father arrive only at the end of the film, out of concern for Angus’ riotous habits rather than his well-being. Fan is, to some degree, a minor deus ex machina who, for the young Scrooge, salvages some light in the bleakness. And for older Scrooge, her appearance is only validated for the benefit of the reader, who learns of her tragic passing and therefore his negligence of his nephew Fred.
The closest thing to Fan for Angus is his now-sectioned father he visits in the later moments of the film to rekindle the fires of their relationship, only to be disappointed when he recognises how far his father’s mental illness has gone. For Angus, his father represents a nostalgia, or at least an artefact of a time when his family was together and Christmas was something to be cherished through togetherness and love. It is in his teens that he recognises that such a past is unachievable as a present, and therefore his future lacks a foundation as he approaches adulthood.
Thankfully, Paul Hunham steps in, albeit unintentionally. Despite their relationship beginning with friction, Hunham offers Angus a new kind of connection. There is a particularly relevant moment in the plot when Hunham tells Angus
There’s nothing new in human experience, Mr. Tully. Each generation thinks it invented debauchery or suffering or rebellion… Before you dismiss something as boring or irrelevant, remember: history is not simply the study of the past. It is an explanation of the present
The filmmaker uses Hunham as a moral counterpoint to Dickens’ ghosts. This moment functions almost didactically, positioning Hunham as a secular, human analogue to the Ghost of Christmas Past. Where Dickens deploys the supernatural to force Scrooge to confront the origins of his emotional scarcity, The Holdovers grounds this same lesson with an intellectual but deeply empathetic appeal. Hunham’s line reframes Angus’ trauma, not as an isolating anomaly but as part of a wider human pattern. He suggests that the past is not a trap but a context. Hunham’s articulation that “history… is an explanation of the present” becomes a direct invitation for Angus to reinterpret his pain, not as something to flee from, but something that can be understood and integrated. The effect mirrors Scrooge’s process of reckoning without the fantastical scaffolding; instead, The Holdovers locates redemption in recognition and shared vulnerability.
In terms of redemption, Angus’ transformation from a self-destructive youth to a more mature, driven individual isn’t like Scrooge’s transformation. Ebenezer Scrooge’s change is fuelled by ghosts, magic, and a supernatural reckoning with his past. Here, Dickens uses the fantastic to create a moral imperative and a path to redemption. The Holdovers, on the other hand, offers no miracles. Angus is reshaped by something purely human, a teacher whose own failures and loneliness make him capable of guiding another lost soul. Both A Christmas Carol and The Holdovers ultimately suggest that the past, however traumatic, can be confronted and partially redeemed through connection, but the latter emphasises that such redemption is fragile, unfinished, and thoroughly human.
The parallel between the film and Dickens’ novella becomes even more striking when we consider their central figures. Hunham and Scrooge are two men whose cynicism is not innate but an armour forged by earlier disappointments. For Paul Hunham, his past is ultimately vaster and more consequential than Angus’, and because of this, it is suggested that Hunham’s redemption will be less likely than that of his student. Despite these obstacles, like Scrooge, Hunham is allowed to facilitate such change through his actions to others. Framed initially as a miser, Hunham acknowledges how others see him: "I find the world a bitter and complicated place, and it seems to feel the same way about me.” Through this, the significance of Hunham’s usually abrasive demeanour becomes clearer; it is not merely a narrative obstacle but the precondition for his transformation. His bitterness, like Scrooge’s misanthropy, is revealed to be a shield rather than a defining essence, making the moments in which he demonstrates generosity all the more meaningful. The Holdovers underscores this by showing that Hunham’s gestures of care, however small, reluctant or awkward, carry disproportionate weight precisely because they emerge from a man who has long ceased to expect kindness from the world.
A similar dynamic holds true in A Christmas Carol. When the Ghost of Christmas Past forces Scrooge to confront the loneliness of his childhood, Dickens shows that his miserliness is “the cold within him” that has gradually been allowed to “freeze his old features,” a defensive posture rather than innate cruelty. The scene in which Scrooge watches his younger self reading alone by the schoolroom fire momentarily softens him. He whispers “I wish… I wish,” unable to finish the thought. This hesitation marks the first fracture in his hardened exterior, opening the possibility of change.
Hunham’s arc mirrors this moment of emotional interruption. Like Scrooge, he is moved not by grand revelations but by intimate recognitions, glimpses of vulnerability in others that reflect something long buried within himself. The film thus suggests that redemption, for Hunham, is less a sweeping reform than a series of incremental openings, moments in which his habitual distance gives way to a tentative, almost fragile, willingness to be affected by the people around him. At the film’s end, when Hunham ‘sacrifices’ the security and comfort of his career to provide Angus with one final opportunity of remaining at the school, his redemption is expressed as an act of martyrdom for the good of another. Like Scrooge, Hunham’s lesson isn’t merely absorbed into a simple acceptance of the past, but into the active changing of the present and future - for the benefit of those around them.
Just as each December I find myself fighting back tears when recounting Scrooge’s childhood and the elderly Scrooge’s grief, I now find myself ritualistically entrenched in the story of Paul Hunham and Angus Tully. Both tales linger with me long after I close the book, turn off the television, or leave the classroom, perhaps because, as a teacher, I witness daily the silent weight my students carry from their own pasts. A Christmas Carol and The Holdovers remind me, in their different ways, that education, like redemption, is rarely about grand revelations; it is about creating moments of recognition, opening small doors of possibility, and offering young people the belief that they are not condemned to repeat their histories. And so, each year, as I guide my class through Scrooge’s transformation, I am reminded that the stories we teach at Christmas are not just festive rituals, but lessons in empathy, resilience, and the fragile, hopeful work of becoming better than the people we once were.